EVE Online: Revelations II Update Coming June 19

EVE Online developer CCP has announced that its upcoming expansion EVE Online: Revelations II will be available June 19.

Revelations II will be free, the seventh expansion released by CCP to be so. Among the changes included in the expansion are a broader sovereignty scope, optimization of the game's tutorial to improve the experience for new players, "significant" CPU optimizations with an eye toward full Vista support in the future, improvements in corporation and alliance management, better options and opportunities for solo exploration, and new tactics for dispersing large fleets.

First opened to the public in 2003, EVE Online is one of the few successful MMOGs on the market to be maintained by an independent developer. While its subscription numbers are nowhere near those of industry behemoths such as World of Warcraft, Everquest or Lineage, the game has been able to distinguish itself with its non-traditional setting, near-complete freedom in play styles, and unique approach to player levels. Currently, EVE Online has a subscriber base of about 200,000.

Speaking of his company's success, CCP's Hilmar Petursson said in an interview that most traditional fantasy-based MMOGs were doomed to fail because of World of Warcraft's dominance. "I just don't understand why people do yet another fantasy game. Why make a clone of World of Warcraft?" he said. "World of Warcraft is the perfect implementation of this. It's been done. Do something else."

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I would have thought their subscription numbers would be higher. The improved tutorial should help a lot, just getting two weeks to play the game as a free trial isn't enough to appreciate it, the giant starting tutorial doesn't help get you going any faster.

What I would like to see is some sort of change to the way you can level. I like that I can level when I'm offline, but not being able to level up faster while I'm online makes the experience feel a little empty (I'm speaking as a user that has played the game off and on, never reaching a high enough level to do anything fun or important in the game world). The skill system rewards those that have stuck in the game for the longest, and I think thats a strange way to base it. I don't want to have to literally spend a year or two to get to a PVPable point. Maybe becuase I never spent more than a few months leveling a signle character I didn't get a chance to see it happen earlier, who knows. It also seems hard for a casual to get in with a corp, so the vastness of space feels lonely.

This was one game I just couldn't get into. Expansions and revamped tutorials won't help players like me as I need to be able to relate to my character in a way that the game doesn't permit. Being stuck in a pod doesn't appeal to me at all. I realise many EVE players are happy with the game as it is and I'm glad for them, but until I can see my character walk around space stations, sleep in a bed and buy clothes and decorate my ship and home this game simply won't appeal to me. Not that it needs to, but I've tried EVE and I wanted to like it and I'm here and I may as well speak up.

On the fantasy vs. sci-fi issue I agree with Hilmar Petursson - why anyone clones WoW is beyond me. There's so much more that developers can do that's NOT doomed to fail or be sidelined by the 800lb gorilla that is WoW. I mean if they want to have similar success to WoW they ought to be looking to other genres. As long as WoW has the numbers it currently has, other fantasy MMOs are doomed to mediocrity.

Well, beery, they did suggest that down the line they would allow avatars to enter space stations. hopefully they will do that one day.

The subscriber base may be about 200K, but you never see more than 25 - 30 K on at a time and only when there's an event or something of that nature. And there seems to be a 32K user limit on the server cluster (Tranquility) as well (queue kicks in about then)

Are they going to remove Devs from Corps in this patch? }8þ